We're all in this virtual space together.
Vildiur

You walk over to the twins, confusion etched on your face. They each hold out their gloved hand for you to take, but you aren’t sure you trust the one smiling like a Cheshire cat. You reach only for the somber twin’s hand and she yanks it back unexpectedly, shaking her head. After her twin shakes her hand insistently, the somber girl holds her hand out again. You suppose you have to grab both of them but you aren’t sure why.

Your two palms touch the twins simultaneously but the reaction you feel is totally different. The leather on the somber twins hand is rough and scratches your bare palm; you feel a pang of emptiness in your heart. The emptiness is all encompassing and you feel as though it is eating your very core. Where before you felt your atoms being torn apart, you now feel as though every ounce of joy and life is being sucked from them. It is excruciating agony, and she holds on to your hand tightly, as though she would never let go. The twin with the mischievous smile slides her silk covered palm into yours almost teasingly, her touch always slightly out of your reach. When the skin of your hand does brush hers though, it is like nothing you’ve ever felt. It is joy and passion, true happiness like which you’ve ever known. Every neuron reverberates with happiness and fulfillment, only capable of being caused by something not on this earth. You want to hold onto the sensation forever, knowing that you can probably never get this amazing sensation anywhere else in your life no matter how long you live for or where you go. But her touch is fleeting, and you crave is to drown out the agonizing pain that is her twin’s touch.

When the two sensations finally even out, you feel calmness wash over you. It is like an equilibrium that of which is only found in the womb, before your life has truly began and your mind is an endless unmoving ocean. You see flashes of crimson hair dancing around you, and you reach out to touch the almost familiar strands. The owner of the hair turns around to give you a dazzling grin, acidic eyes mesmerizing. They are running towards a blurry image that you cannot make out from so far away, and the sanguine figure motions you closer. You see an array of crow’s feathers dancing across the air in front of you, clouding your vision. Through the feathers you see flashes of a sparkling ocean, swirling with every shade of blue you have ever seen in your life and some you could not even imagine. A waif of a figure, ghostly pale, leans beside the ocean, releasing a message in a bottle into the depths with tear stained cheeks. The crow’s feathers continue to shuffle around your vision, blocking and distorting things. Now they part to reveal a blonde mopped mannequin, have of the flesh on their face peeled off to reveal cold hardware underneath. You shake your head and the crow’s feathers fall around you like snow, softly brushing your skin and sending you sensations of the visions you had kept seeing. The exuberant figure with red hair runs and runs, his destination always out of reach. The ocean, the sylph, the mannequin, all clouded and twisted within the raven’s black feathers. Your vision clears and the somber twin stands before you, though you now know her identity is more than it would seem. She begins saying something to you though you cannot hear it. You step closer, hoping to hear the words.

She mouths her sentence again and again, until you finally understand the message.

You are Alone.

Then you fall into blackness.

Myos dropped the lifeless woman, still in shock of what he had just done. Yes he had won...but he just murdered a person in cold blood. Not to accomplish his goal, not to defend himself or protect humanity...but because he got angry. There was technically no blood on his shaking pianist’s fingers, but he felt the sticky liquid coating his palms and running between his fingers like the fake mud provided for them in the center of the park in the middle of the residential square. Myos looked around as if someone might have been watching those last moments, but the room was empty save for himself and the two lifeless bodies - one friend and one foe.

Game over, Myos.

The shaken man tore his lime computer glasses off with a start, his breath hitching at the message. The Empress was gone. She was dead; he had felt the life leave her and her breathing cease with his own hands. Why was he still receiving the messages? Weren’t they from her?

Myos’s face was distorted in horror, and he brought the heel of his boot down on the infernal machine, pounding it over and over until it was nothing but glass shards and useless circuits. He wanted out. Needed out. He didn’t feel like a hero anymore, he felt like a criminal. What he was doing was illegal. So what if the crazed woman wanted to turn humanity into her slaves that would be more appealing than this horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Myos shook the distressing thoughts away, rubbing his fingers lightly over the star pattern on the smooth area of his headphones to calm himself. What was done was done. Humanity was saved. A small smile graced his face as his torrent of emotions smoothed out and his optimistic rationality took over. The tyrant Empress was gone and he would be hailed as a hero - the stars that led him so far had chosen his destiny like he knew they would.

Just as the thought was crossing his head, fifty to one hundred men, all with the pin of the Alioth Empire present on their chest, stormed the room from all sides. It was a blur of sound and action, akin to an abstract watercolor painting, and Myos was unable to focus on anything. He was being yelled at to surrender, accused of murder, treason, conspiracy against the crown, he was being tackled and manhandled and pushed this way and that. He fought against the many hands that grabbed at him, twisting and turning to escape from the vice like grip until he felt the warm buzzing of handcuffs being placed around his wrists. He tried to tell them, warm them, explain of the Empress’s plan and how he saved them, he was a hero and they should be thankful, but the guard ignored his desperate pleas and struggles to be released.

Finally, a loud thwack resounded in the back of his skull, and Myos felt his leaf green eyes roll back and warm liquid matted his hair.

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